I HAVE A NEW HOME

Hey everybody, I know it's a ghost town up in here b/c it's been over six months since I even updated. I did want to let those of y'all who still check know that I have begun a new blog- with a new focus (though still rabidly and militantly feminist) and here's the link:

JUST A FEW SMALL NIPS

It's better, it's at Word press, and I think I'm gonna try and find ways to link or import some of the better stuff from this blog to that one over there.

Hope y'all will update your links and your bookmarks, and all that stuff. I've missed everyone!!!

yes. alive. promise.

I know it has been months since I have posted. I have been getting the "are you ever gonna post/come back/write anything you lazy bum" message from a few people.

Yes, I am coming back. But probly not to here. I have overpoliticized, and it's been paralysis and an excuse NOT to post- you know. The whole, "I don't have anything pertinent to say" or "I'm behind on the current political situation" or whatever (fill in blank) scenario has served as a "reason" not to write anything.

The plain truth is that I work a job that completely zaps my creative energy, and I have been dealing with other issues as well that do the same.

Writer's block. Ug. Makes me wanna throw shit.

Anyhoo, I WILL be back, and soon, but with a twist and in a yet undisclosed location. I will update here, tho, as soon as that is set up.

Thank y'all for lookin' out.

Just Sayin' Howdy

So I been busy.

*boo, hiss, she always says that!!!*

Ok, ok. I been dating someone fabulous. OK? And working. And attempting to build a social life.

Writing isn't really that conducive to having a social life.

The main reason I'm here right now is 'cause I've notices that Biting Beaver has gone invitation only, and I'm wondering if I could get an invite. BB? You out there? I meeeeeees you.

Oh yeah. I'm gay. Ain't going back, at least as far as having meaningful relationships. Life seems a little bit less heavy now that that's out there on the table. Already talked to the mom and everything. The girl I'm with is fabulous, as I already mentioned, and I hope that it sticks. Looks like it's gonna. We're moving in together. But I know that I don't want to invest THAT particular kind of energy in men anymore. I tried 'em, and I gave 'em back. Too bad I can't get a refund.

What else? I've missed everyone. Wonder if folks still come around and look at this page. If so, gimme a holler.

I'm gonna go eat a chicken leg now.

EVEN More Stupid Shit From... Yeah, You Guessed It.

Summer's here. And so now, this kinda shit's everywhere.

Apparently all my personal struggle and strife that led me to realize that no matter what I do I'm fat and I'll look fat in a swimsuit and that's perfectly fine, because being fat doesn't make me less human coulda been bypassed had I just, at some time or other, been able to hork up the two hundred bucks or more it takes to purchase a well-engineered piece of lycra to cover my woman-bits just so.

A call to all socially-conscious fat women: DON'T spend 200 dollars on a bathing suit! Go to Kmart, get a suit, then spend the rest on something better. Please.

And watch this. It's good to balance out the Advertising Industrial Complex PTSD-jitters.

Shoes. And the Slipping Down of my Feminist Life.

Ok, ok, maybe I'm being just a little bit melodramatic. But I just bought these shoes:

And so logically, I honestly have to ask myself whether or not the makeup and perfume has poisoned me. Or what. At least they're comfy and they make me tall, right? RIGHT???

Patti Smith

So I got lost in the Craigslist malay last night; am now trying to decide whether boycotting craigslist will be fruitless, futile, or just alienate me from cheap used furniture.

Anyhoo, seeing all the ads in the "erotic services" section triggered me. To utilize the lingo.

See, I get depressed pretty frequently but usually am engaged in work and so can avoid my own feelings, unhealthy as that may sound. Thing about my feelings is that they make me do stupid, self-destructive stuff sometimes, when the *bad ones* start to manifest I get real wack-o. Can't afford that anymore, literally and figuratively. So stuffing, avoidance, distraction, all that's what I tend to do to work around it.

So stupid me had never ever seen the "erotic services" section on the craigslist. So I notice it last night, think, "what the fuck is that? Is that what I think it is?" And click. Oblivion, almost. Right?

Generally, when I ask myself, "Is that what I think it is?" the answer is usually "YES!" Gotta learn to trust my instincts better, I guess.

The thing about Greater Metro Orlando is that it's a convention/tourist-trap/vacation town. Used to just be orange groves, before the Big Rat built his nest here. But as the economy's changed, prostitution has become a bit of an epidemic. You can drive up and down Orange Blossom Trail and see this play out in real-time. A couple months ago I nearly had a wreck with a guy who was scoping the women- a Rich White Guy in a Big Fancy Car. Couldn't get more typical. I rolled my window down and yelled at him "Go home to your wife you stupid fucker, what would your mother think!!!!" and he turned down a side street. Presumibly to pick up and exploit the woman he'd nearly caused a wreck over.

Anyways. Craigslist.

I'm sure it's probably similar in metro areas all across the country, but I was disturbed by the ads in the erotic services section, to say the least. All kinds of fucked-up questions generated; the ads are in a sort of menu-format of white-male-supremacism.

I mean, why the hell would men even bother to try and respect women, why when there's just apparently a gaggle of them out there, an "endless supply," in the words of Andrea Dworkin, presumably ready for them to rape at will, who look like "perfect" women according to the Gringo Macho cultural hegemony? Why?

And then there's the self-hate that comes from seeing all this, the immediate drop in self-worth and self esteem, to know that I've been frightfully close to this, to know that there have been times when I damn near did what the women you see in the ads are doing; the inner struggle to not strive to BE LIKE them to gain men's approval. There are more contradictions than we know that comes from this side of white male supremacist culture- the side where we are literally ONLY MEAT. Where we're bought and we're sold and we're brainwashed to think it's perfectly acceptable, that it's all a matter of choice and free will, where we try and try to get the men in our lives to see where they're a part of all this and they just shut us out.

So after my craigslist trauma I took a shower, sat down to look at my emails, and found this, and it helped me remember that I'm part of a movement to rebuild perception and notions of power, and it made me feel a little better, a little bit less wacko.

Pat Head Summit Talks Re: Fuckin' Patriarchal White Supremacist Dipshit Imus

So I keep checking the Knox News Sentinel and generally digging around just to see what the Lady Vols have to say about what Imus said. On the Lady Vols blog I found a wrap-up of Pat Head Summit's statement on the matter.

This made me a little bit proud to say I'm from TN.

I think I listened to Don Imus's show one time, or part of one time, years ago; mainly 'cause someone had mentioned it to me and told me it was funny. I thought it was puerile macho bullshit then and I still do. Every time I've caught a snippet of it those times I was fortunate enough to have cable I've thought the same thing.

OK. So why the fuck do people want to call what I write "vitriol," then grace the blather that this dipshit puts out there with a nomenclature as fancy as "commentary?" Oh yeah, I forgot. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy, and all that shit. Hmph.

My thoughts: yeah, of course the fucker should be fired. He shouldn't even have had the chance to make this mistake. His gig has always been white-male supremacist, imperialist horseshit. ALWAYS. And I ain't no hipster, never have been, so this kinda shit doesn't really have laugh value for me in any sort of abstract, "absurdist" sense (and many thanks to Subject and Object for that handy definition.)

Sorry for putting up my little two cents so late; y'all know I have an allergy to blogging at all.

Fuck the patriarchy. Here's some bell hooks.

Could We Start Again, Please???

To Stan Goff (and please disregard the christy-imagery, the dedication is more about the lyrics):




I must now, sadly, remove Stan from my short list of manly allies.

The person who inspired me to carve my own, albeit unkempt, niche here in blogolandia seems to have gone all bonkers. Or something. He's not been forthcoming for the reasons for his bonkerness. But many of us thought of him as a good leader and a strong ally in a fight that never ends. And I'm sure just as many are sad to see him slip away.

I imagine that if I did write as I damn well should it would be easy for me, a white person who's bloggage totally misses the mark so often, to slip into self-isolation.
My hotel campaign has been my island lately.

No hotel campaign, no family, no one woman or man is an island. Guess we forget that sometimes.

Can we start again, Stan? Please come back to reality.

Pretty Nifty.

Spreading the meme, y'all.

Excuses. Yeah, I Know.

Sixteen hour days and little sleep and no money are making me grumpy and giving me writer's cramp from HELL. So I'm reposting a rant here that I put on myspace, targeting an asshole from my past. Mua haa. Just reread it today and though it's a bit "specific" I still really liked the general ring of it. Enjoy.

Denial is a defense mechanism in which a person is faced with a fact that is too painful to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence. The subject may deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether (simple denial), admit the fact but deny its seriousness (minimisation) or admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility (transference). The concept of denial is particularly important to the study of addiction. -From the Wiki



Ah, the fingerpointings and accusations and fucked-up behaviors of the past. These seem to be the things that trudge across my grave lately.

Three years ago I faced a new year as a woman at a crossroads- still stuck in the mud of living my life for a man, with just enough of me heaving through the muck of the surface to want to scratch my way out, for good.

It took me a while to change and to move ahead. It took some time and some hard, mind-warping experience for me to admit that maybe the things I did were more than a little bit fucked-up. It took me being a traitor and a liar. I had to remake the wound, one I already suffered from, myself in a new form in order to start healing and curing it myself. I guess I'm stubborn in that way.

I'm not sure exactly when I had that "ah-ha!" moment, when it really, really hit me, that what I do and what I say and how I live really has an impact on other people. The whole self-indulgent, individualistic, Dionysian meme of hedonistic experience really doesn't fly; it's actually quite contrary to self-preservation.

Why's that?

Well, people are people. We are not Orangutans, we are not Bonobo Chimpanzees. We live in a condition that is far from physical isolation, and our primary adaptive traits are those that allow us to interact with one another- our hands, our complex vocal structures, our big brains, and our bipedal bodies produce an exaptation- culture- which is the physical manifestation of our thoughts. Our cultural and phyisiological evolution is tied together in a spiderweb so intricate that the things we think about and the things we say have physical consequences- no matter what the Smart Dead White Men say about it.

We can imagine and wish all we want that our individual choices only effect us as individuals. To actualy believe that is perhaps the slowest and most painful genocide that we could *choose* to inflict on ourselves.

Perhaps the turning point for me came when I realized that the fact that I had made a conscious *choice* to do something harmful, that the harmful thing was the thing I wanted more than anything to *choose* to do, didn't mean dick to the person that I hurt. It didn't validate me one bit, because the framework from which I'd learned to make my choices was all fucked up in the first place.

I realized that I indeed had become a charicature- of a woman who thought she was doing what she wanted to do, while she was really only playing to the more extreme and prurient wants of the men who were running her life. My actions made me a sort of "gatekeeper"- that's to say that in the bigger scheme of things, I actively chose to reinforce a cycle that oppresses women. I was letting men fuck me over and saying out loud that I loved it- and that more or less gave the men involved a pass to try and do the same with other women. I had abused what privilege I had.

It's odd, isn't it, how a person who wallows in self-pity, in their fucked-up childhood, in all their bad breaks and other such manifestations of their own "individual situations" in order to justify apathy and lack of action- isn't it just a bit odd that such a person can be so very, very proactive when it comes to their own, personal, individual desires?

Then when someone points out the pattern as it repeats, fractalesque, damaging the already damaged- the person who finally gets his turn under the microscope attempts to second-guess the perception of the person peering through the lens; he needs to jar the focus, change the range of magnification.

Thing is, I too had a fucked-up childhood and poverty and abuse and mental assault on my plate from as far back as I can remember. I think the operative difference is in the fact that I came to a point where I realized that hey-wait a minute- I'm still around after all that. That means I must be strong. I've been a strong person all these years, I've just been pushing in the wrong direction- I've been pushing against people who suffer the same shit that I suffer. I made a *choice* to push against the people and the Powers who have made me suffer.

I also figured out that men who abuse and manipulate and hurt and take and take and take are not monsters. They are regular men. That is manliness. Manliness is a bit monstruous, but it's also not abnormal, by any stretch of the imagination. Such is the nature of privilege; something for nothing; entitlement. Every man who wishes to support us has to examine and deconstruct that side of himself and be open to the examination and deconstruction of his masculinity and male privilege, as well as accountability in areas of abuse of said privilege. They close themselves to this, and they are, effectively, against our freedom.

It does not surprise me that a man for whom I used to dance reacted strongly when he realized that I no longer will dance for him, and instead I will merely shove him in the direction that he needs to go. I could give a shit about his navel-gazing and self-reflection. I don't need to know every minute detail of his personal experience to know that his actions hamper and hinder the personal lives of people that I love dearly. His supposed former "respect" for me is a drop of water on a hot stove eye, because he doesn't know shit about respect- except as an abstract and intellectualized concept. And he doesn't seem to have changed a bit from when I last saw him, last knew him.

Words don't mean shit without actions to back them up. Our lives are where we act. If our lives are empty, all our mumblings and rantings and intellectual fiddle-faddle are so much dust in the wind. Stepping away from this man and other men and what they have stood for in my life, that has been a way that I have *chosen* to take action for my own good and the good of others.

Men will always call us bitter and poisonous and any number of names when we make this choice. They'll always attempt to deflect accountability for their own actions back onto us. And they have and always will attempt to threaten the removal of their physical/emotional proximity and whatever validation they percieve it brings in an attempt to castigate us when we don't want to do their fucking dance.

My plan of action is not only not to dance, but to push and to shove and to never, ever let another man step on me again.

BOO!

That's the sound a ghost makes, right?

Just another one of my, "Hey, I ain't dead I'm just busy with life" blogposts.
Since last I posted I have moved into my own apartment in sunny Kissimmee, FL and procured a used loveseat as well as a bed and some other sparse stuff for the place. Which doesn't sound like too much but I've been pulling rather over-the-top workweeks as the campaign I'm on rolls towards closure.

Other shit, like one of my biggest heroes (whether or not he shoulda been) leaving the organized left ('cause the unorganized are already organized, dontcha know- if that happy horseshit ain't blogfodder I don't know WHAT is)and ceasing to answer my emails or phone calls; the dissappearance of the Biting Beaver (though she has since popped up to say SHE'S been having fucked-upedness in her life); the lack of a social network of any kind other than people who are organizing me or people whom I am organizing; the fact that I have to register my car in TWO DAYS in FL in the midst of house visiting with committee people and... and... I mean, I'm kinda glad I can't stop because that means that I can't lose momentum. Right???

And I have grown rather detached from intelligentsi-left, as I've been slogging through the trenches in the right-to-work south, at the mouth of the lair of one of the biggest monster mice the world has ever seen.





Yolanda. I'm totally feelin' it.

Today Yola posted a rather succinct analysis of a frequent malaise of young, oppressed radicals- the one that makes us isolate from one another.

Too much stuff to do. Too little time. Overwhelming.

When I get home from work all I usually want to do is bathe, eat chocolate, and then listen to salsa or go right to sleep. I can't even make myself read nowadays. All of my creative juice is sucked away by my job. ALL of it. I eat and sleep and breath this work; I dream that I'm in the hotel cafeteria, that whether or not someone carries through with some key, crucial task is all up to ME.

I need a kick in the ass from my friends at this point; thing is all my friends are faaaar away.

That's all I can muster tonight. I have stomach cramps to attend to. And I really do have to go on house visits with a committee person tomorrow. (Just one of those little things that makes it all worth it, while swimming and milling around with all these "already-organized" people.)

Just a Reminder...

That this is my piece of the blogosphere and that comments are added or rejected solely at my whim.

Martha. Look at this post before you decide to comment again, if you do.

This blog acts as a platform for 1. my thoughts and 2. well thought-out commentary from others that sticks to the topic at hand, when there does happen to be a topic. It is NOT a platform for puerile libertarianism. Thanks.

Blogger- UGH!

Ok, I think things LOOK a little better for the new year.

Bless yer heart, V, for doing all that work. I still want to use the thing you made- but the thing is when I tried to paste it in, blogger said it wouldn't work!

Blogger is stupid.

I must now go and buy a camisole for a party, then I will be back either this evening or in the morning to post my resolutions. *shudders*

I'm Fuckin' GORGEOUS.

Saddam Hussein was executed this week. James Brown died. All this shit's hitting the fan.

But I'm blogging about how "beautiful" I am.

I did two of these things, with two different photos. Here's one.



Who the hell knew? Take that all you misogynist bastards who thought I was just a fat, bitter, ugly man-hater. I'm fucking beautiful. The internet said it, so it has to be true.



Gotta love the internet.

Nearest Book Tag from Yolanda

So my pal Yolanda over there at the Primary Contradiction tagged me with this wierd thing. And I have to tag somebody else.

Here's the rules:
1. Go to the nearest book in your reach and turn to page 123.
2. Go to the fifth sentence of the book.
3. Copy the next three sentences, then tag someone else.

My tags are Nelson H., Spotted Elephant, and Amananta.

Here's what I got:

"These anti-union workers formed networks that militated against unionization and exerted social pressure on anyone who dared venture the opinion that a union might be a good idea, thus raising the costs of being pro-union- especially in the kitchen, where the leaders of the anti-union group worked. In the summer of 1998, I visited two kitchen workers who had disagreed with the "just vote no" committee. However, both had been intimidated into silence. "You don't understand what it's like in here. The kitchen is a closed environment."

From: Rebuilding Labor: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement, Edited by Ruth Milkman and Kim Voss.

Loves y'all.

Youtube Stuff. Yup. I'm an addict.

So I decided to throw some vids up here. The one above is El Cantante de los Cantantes, Hector Lavoe, from Ponce, Puerto Rico. He's become one of my favorite singers EVER. I like this video in particular 'cause it starts out with him singing this song, made famous in Plena form by a guy named Ismael Rivera (A.K.A. Maelo), called "Elena, Elena", which is basically my name. And so. I'm obsessed with it, obviously- and besides that, many of my new Boricua friends sing it when they see me. SO.

The above is a video of Celia Cruz doing a live performance of "La Vida es un Carnaval," one of my favorite songs by yet another of my favorite singers. Never did agree with her politics, or her Fidel-bashery, yet... I mean, shit. She's over 75 in this performance.

So. I been sad this evening, and now must go to bed.

Is it a bad sign when you look forward to laying down in bed to cry yourself to sleep? Probably. Oh well. One more video, another Hector Lavoe (I'm in love with this guy.)

Both the artists here were part of the Fania Allstars. Both are now dead.

That's all for tonight. Sleep well.

THIS ...

...is actually what a Feminist Looks Like. A Radical White Fat Southern Feminist Race-Traitor, when she's all pissed off at the FMF, to be precise.

So. I rattled off an email to their customer service folks this morning. I'll post the exchange as soon as I hear back from them. If I hear back from them.

Enraged. As Usual. (or Fat Blog #1)

So I'm fumbling throuth cyberlandia, as I am wont to do on a random Saturday night, and I fumble right over a picture of this here shirt:

And so I think to myself, "Glorious! I will toodle right on over to the Feminist Majority Website and maybe order one of these."

But my toodle was toddled when, upon arrival and investigation, I learned that the largest size the store carried was a sub-standard XL, said to fit a size 14. And then I nearly threw my new laptop out the window.

My plea to all y'all, petty as it might sound, is to please prattle off some angry emails. My plea to the FMF store is that they remove the word "radical" from the shirt until they offer them in a size that will actually fit fat people. You can email them at store@feminist.org or you can send some thoughts to the customer service folk at fmfsupport@mindspring.com. I am saving my spew for tomorrow, because seeing this sent me into a kinda whirlwind that's just the tip of the iceburg after a couple months of dealing with fat-phobia up close and in person.

You know, back home, I'd cultivated deep and long-suffering friendships with damn near everyone I knew. The people who surrounded me knew me, and if I got any bullshit about my fatness it was from strangers or, occasionally, from my mother. I can deal with that.

Now I'm at a relatively new job. Forcing people to acclimate to me has been difficult. I have to work very hard to prove myself, because people have a lot of fucked-up assumptions about me, based on my appearance.

And of course, it's nothing that anybody's gonna be brash enough to say out loud. I feel fat phobia from the assumptions that people make about what I can and cannot do, about my presumed lack of self-esteem, about my percieved lack of attractiveness to the opposite sex, and about a lot of other shit that has absolutely DICK to do with whether or not I have a big, fat ass.

I'm relearning that fat people are expected to be losers. People think that we are fumbly or we are lazy, or that we are afraid to do outrageous and energetic things. We get unsolicited advice on what we should or should not eat, as if we are totally ignorant to the basics of nutrition. When we go shopping with friends, friends look at us all funny like when we want to pick flashy or fitted clothing. Oh, and this is also another arena for unsolicited advice.

"You should buy this, it will hide your belly." "If you buy that shirt, you'll have to get something long-sleeved to wear with it to cover up your arms." "You need a bra like this to lift your boobs up." "Are you gonna get That??"

People think, though they never have the guts to say it to your face, that you can't be a good, confident leader if you are fat.

People constantly wave their own fears of becoming what you are in front of your face, without a thought as to how you will feel about it. Anti-fat thought is presumed to be correct thought.

"Oh, I need to lose this tummy of mine." Wait, you barely have a paunch. "Well, being fat is just not good for ME."

People inadvertently insult you even as they attempt to compliment you. "You've got such a pretty face." "You'd be so pretty if you just lost some weight."

The reason that this is so hard for me, this new period of adjustment, is that I'm now having to do in a matter of months what I've had a lifetime or a matter of years to do with all the people I've cared about previously. I think that when folks hear about me, or when they read my resume, they are surprised when they see me for the first time.

Ok. Here's the deal. I have a college education. I am fluent in 2 languages. I read, I write, I can add and subtract. I'm not lazy, and I won't get freaked out by having to climb stairs or walk a few blocks. I don't think I'm ugly. I don't think I'm stupid. And I ain't scared of nobody. I don't need coddling and my fatness isn't what makes me unhappy and crazy. Living in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy makes me unhappy and crazy. OK???

Here are some tips for the non-fat, to evade crossing over into the territory of fat-phobic assholedom:

1. It's none of your goddam business what we eat. Keep your fucked-up and ignorant opinions and advice to yourself unless we ask for it, explicitly.

2. If you've really never known a fat person then you live under a goddam rock or something. Chances are you've known a few fat people but your oppressive notions of what fatness are force you to refuse to accept that good people you know can be fat. Get over that, and do it swiftly. Fat people are more of the norm than the exception. That's the reality.

3. If you have a question, ask it tactfully but in a straight-forward way. Passive aggression is always an unattractive quality. Questions about personal hygiene and our sex lives are fucked-up, degrading, and none of your goddam business to begin with. We aren't circus freaks. I'll repeat, we are the norm, at least here in Gringolandia.

4. Stop making fat jokes. Period. It's fucked up and mean, and there's no excuse for it. Making fat jokes and generally poking fun at fat people is dehumanizing, it's a form of oppression, and even if you're the king or queen of social justice in your own mind, when you make fun of fat people you are acting like The Man. Stop it.

5. Don't try to set us up on dates with people you know unless we specifically ask you to do that. Fat does not mean abhorrent or socially awkward. Fat means fat- nothing more, nothing less. Learn that, now.

6. You have no right to presume that our fatness means anything more than we weigh a certain amount over what's been deemed by capitalist white supremacist patriarchy as the "norm."

7. Do not assume that we are lazy or unintelligent.

8. Do not assume that we are weak.

9. Do not assume that we are obsessive-compulsive about food.

10. Do not assume that we are desperate for your friendship and/or your sympathy.

11. Do not assume that we think that we are less attractive than you are, or that we hate our bodies, or that we strive to be like you.

12. Do not, I repeat Do NOT EVER look us in the face and tell us that we are not fat. We know that this is a lie, and so do you. It's insulting and it is an attempt to deny us full humanity as we are, as we exist right now. We do not need your lies to know that we are human, and we are unapologetic about the amount of space we take up in this world.

13. Oh yeah. Quit bitchin' and moanin' and whinin' about your fat roll, or your wiggly thighs, or your love handles, or your OWN fucked-up, delusional, self-image problems to us. You don't know shit about what it's like to walk around in this world and actually be fat. We have to fight every day to accept ourselves in a world where you and everyone else screams at us that we don't fit in, that we are freaks, that we will never be accepted. We don't have the time to work out those problems for you, and it's just fucked up and rude, on top of all that. You might as well just say, "shit! If I ain't careful I'll end up like you." That's how it translates. So shut up and go do some crunches if you feel so damn bad.

Now. The reason that I was so enraged by what I found on the FMF website has a lot to do with what enrages me about the culture of activism, as it has evolved under the auspices of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in Gringolandia. The standards that "good activists" are held up to lean towards reflecting an oppressive aesthetic, one that mirrors that of the system that we fight. Activism in our country carries a sheen of "chic" that makes me want to vomit, partly because we live in the belly of an overfed, overprivileged beast. This movement is not a place for folks to stomp on their soapboxes, wallow in self-righteousness, and shake their fingers at people while they convince themselves that they are "fighting the good fight." It is not a place where stars are born, it is not a place that welcomes your self-righteous condescension. Cockiness and arrogance are not reflective of confidence. They reflect a need to dominate. We are fighting for an end to domination.

Fat phobia keeps potential leaders and activists and revolutionaries from thinking they are good enough to fight with everybody else. It acts to maintain the status quo, it's a tool in dehumanization.

Fuck fat phobia. And if you don't think it is a problem, then you need to reevaluate your place in the movement.

Upcoming Bloggerly Changes and Other Stuff As Such

Due to, ahem, technical difficulties (read: my own inability to stick my finger up my ass with both hands here in blogolandia) I have been poopy about blogging.

However, thanks to V at reSISTERance, I will be once again re-emerging, with a much much more kickass blog. It will have a new url and everything, which will be revealed as soon as it's put together. It really, really makes me all gooey-grateful that V has offered to help me out.

I read this last week and it upset me, very very much.

Fuck a bunch of patriarchal assholes. Fuck 'em for making those of us with the most beautiful, most clear, most piercing voices too scared to stand up and sing out loud. Fuck 'em for making us think that our song ain't worth hearing; that our song ain't vital soulful music that isn't just relevant to our cause, it's necessary if we want to keep living. Just fuck 'em all to hell.

Our choir can't stand to lose any more voices. What the hell are we going to do about this?

Anyways.

Another Concrete Illustration of the Fucked-upedness of Electoral Politics

The Democrats are schmarmy liberal rich bastards who've managed to whitewash and water-down the labor and social justice mass-movements and who've brought us blatantly imperialistic policy (see NAFTA, etc.). But they're not as bad as the Republicans. At least the damn Dems give lip service to social movements, right?

I'm gonna be absolutely honest. I'm currently not able to register to vote in FL (gasp!) and to tell the truth I'm disillusioned enough with the system to not really feel that bad. I understand, barely, the need to foster a democratic majority in congress, blah blah blah.

But this chunk of fascist horseshit from voteourvalues.com is almost enough to motivate me to fill out an absentee ballot, or whateveritisI'msupposed to do as a future Floridian living in a motel who's technically supposedly registered to vote in TN- just to go and vote a straight Dem. ticket, just to make some bastard nazi Republican feel a little bit worse for losing an election. I don't get it. I honestly don't. Go there, the few of you who haven't seen this on the
Primary Contradiction or Feral Scholar already, listen, discuss. You have to click on the link that says "listen to the ads" to hear the hooey. Goddam.

So it's either the Republinazis or the Other White Party. I oftentimes think that our resources would be better spent stockpiling weapons and buying up land in Alaska. But hey, that's just wacky, 'ol me.